Type: Exhibition case
Name: Ellis Hamilton
Detail: Ellis Hamilton of Camden, New Jersey, the son of a prominent newspaper editor, had been active in the local militia since his early teens. At the age of sixteen, he became a lieutenant in Co. E of the Fifteenth New Jersey Volunteers. He was the youngest officer to be commissioned in the Union army. After intense fighting at Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and Salem Church in Virginia, he was promoted to captain of Co. F in November 1863 at the age of seventeen. On May 6, 1864, he was seriously wounded at the Battle of the Wilderness when a single bullet passed through both his legs. Taken to Seminary Hospital in Georgetown, he died on May 16 at the age of nineteen. He was buried in Trenton’s Mercer Cemetery.